Skip to main content
Main

Potato Soup

A creamy potato soup made with milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Potato Soup

Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash and peel the potatoes, then soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Boil the potatoes until very soft.

  3. Drain the water from the potatoes and mash them.

Make the soup

  1. In a double boiler, cook the onion and celery with the milk.

  2. Add the boiling milk and seasonings to the mashed potatoes.

  3. Strain the mixture and bring it back to a boil.

  4. In a small saucepan, melt the butter until bubbling, then add the flour and mix well.

  5. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling soup and let it boil for 5 minutes.

  6. If the soup is too thick, add more hot milk.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that breaks down when cooked and mashed, giving the soup its body.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creaminess of the soup.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and, with the flour, helps thicken the soup.
Flour
Starch that thickens the soup as it heats with the butter and liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter mixture to the boiling soup. Flour must be cooked in fat before it meets liquid, and the soup must be boiling when it is stirred in. Otherwise the flour can clump and the soup can stay pasty or taste raw.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, milk, onion, celery, flour, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, onion, celery, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More potato soup recipes

Irish 12Sweet 9Cream 8Creamy 8Swiss 6Scotch 5 See all 473 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes